Endings
by Linker27
Summary: “How about that?” Regenerating would be giving in: showing fear of death, fear of pain, and worse than either of those, it would mean doing what the Doctor wanted. “I win.”


**Endings**, by Linker27

Disclaimer: Basically, everything that follows should be credited to BBC. I'm just filling in the gaps.  
A/N: I wasn't planning on posting this. I'm pretty sure that I still shouldn't be posting it. Not only am I sure it must have been done before (I haven't seen it, but I haven't been looking too long), but it was written as an exercise; a trial-run of sorts for the real premise brewing in my head. I think it might well have failed. But I'm fond of it anyways, so here goes.

* * *

He wouldn't do it; he wouldn't regenerate. I knew that even as I begged him not to leave. It would be giving in: showing fear of death, fear of pain, and worse than either of those, it would mean doing what I wanted. And he knew it – reveled in it – and even as the agony writ its way across his face, he grinned, knowing that he had won, for good.

There was nothing I could do. I didn't have any power over him – Martha did a good job getting me my strength back, but if there was one thing I'd learned in the past year, it was that the Master held all of the cards, and I didn't even have enough knowledge to pay the ante. And it was like he said. I didn't know him quite so well as I'd thought. Standing on the cliff overlooking his fleet, I'd told him that I knew him. That I knew he would never kill himself to win. And here he was, proving me wrong. With the fall of his budding empire, there was nothing that he wanted enough to keep living: nothing I could use. Because everything left that tied him to life was secondary compared to our ongoing fight. Winning and making sure that I could never even the score… For some reason, that was worth more than living to him, now.

It started when Francine raised the gun, and he dared her. "Go on," he said. "Do it." Perhaps he would have regenerated, if she had shot him then. I hadn't given him the advantage yet, and his future was still in question. But there was look in his eyes, like he was banking everything on the next move. Cautiously, so cautiously, I convinced Francine that she was better than that, handing her off to Martha to look after. And as I turned back, I saw the Master sigh, glaring across the room with a disappointed frown. He was annoyed that I convinced her not to fire; at least that was my initial impression.

His next words worried me, though. Not a joke, not a scathing comment about the weaknesses of humanity or of caring. Just a simple statement, words cold and weary. Whatever his purpose had been, he hadn't told Francine to shoot to hurt her. "You still haven't answered the question." Question? Ah, Jack's. Before the Joneses decided to kill him. He was asking, so he obviously didn't know what my answer would be; he would never have bothered if he had. Though it meant he had his ideas. I wondered which possibilities he'd considered: which ones he feared most. "What happens to me?" he asked.

His expression remained calm as I revealed his future. That alone was enough to prove that the answer disturbed him. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, though, really. He was a threat, and while I wasn't going to let him die, I certainly wasn't going to let him slip through my grasp. Imprisonment was the only solution: imprisonment far away from anyone he could hurt. "The only safe place for him is the TARDIS," I told Jack. The response was nearly immediate.

"You mean you're just going to… keep me?"

The way he said it, it almost sounded like I was the dictator ruling from a palace in the sky. He made it sound like I _wanted _it that way. Like I was that cruel. "Hmm. If that's what I have to do." It struck me suddenly how cruel I sounded, and I wondered, just briefly, if maybe he was just a little bit right. I looked away; I didn't want 

to look at him and let him see my doubt and his victory. I talked towards Jack instead, trying to atone for my cold words with a more gentle explanation. It probably annoyed him more than anything, but I couldn't leave it like that. Not when he was looking at me with such a wretched expression. I had to justify myself, to Jack if not to him. And that's about when everything fell apart.

I forgot to mind the humans behind me. I had been watching the Master and Jack, and so I didn't see Lucy. Lucy, who stayed quiet when the Joneses wanted to string him up. Lucy, who had more reason than any to want revenge. I should have paid more attention to them! Lucy shot him, because I didn't see her. I could have shot myself for being so stupid. The wound wasn't particularly dangerous for a Time Lord; the most I could say was that it didn't herald a good start to my minding duties. The problem lay in the simple fact that the Master wouldn't regenerate.

"And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with _you_." He said, when I begged. The derision, the stress on 'you' made it ever so clear that, to draw on an old human adage, there wasn't a chance in hell.

I didn't know what to say. For a moment, all thought seemed to vanish, from hurt or panic I wasn't sure. I settled for "Well you've got to." Still too harsh: I sounded like a prison guard, all threats and fists and scorn. "It can't end like this," I continued. After everything, it couldn't end in an aircraft carrier above Earth, at the hands of a human woman and her handgun. It couldn't. How many years had our bitter rivalry lasted? Through everything, it seemed. And if he left, I'd be alone again, this time for good. "Regenerate!" I shouted. The words fell flat; no one believed that they would work.

"How about that?" He sounded tired, but even then his voice was laced with amusement. And I knew for sure it was ending, for good, right there on the Valiant. I'd had a year where I wasn't alone, and that year was erased. And so, too, it seemed, would be the Master. "I win." And he let the pain and the bullet take him away, eternally victorious.

And I was alone again.


End file.
